A Perspective on the iPad - “Computing” as an Appliance

Disclaimer: I am what you would likely call a “Mac bigot” or “Apple fanboy”, as I have been using Apple products for about 30 years now - although not on a totally exclusive basis - we have had somewhat of an “open relationship”, and I am currently playfully dallying with Windows (i.e., I only run [...]

Thoughts on Innovation vs. Branding Strategy

A post over at The Blake Project’s blog discusses the issue of a a strategy based on Innovation, vs a Branding strategy. The author, in my opinion, sets up a strawman argument as to what an innovation strategy is (using The Sharper Image as an example), and then goes on to extol the value of [...]

What is the New Normal

I was just reading a blog post of a dear friend of mine Barri Carian, who poses the question The New Normal – What is it?  (Visit her blog at http://www.ocmetro.com/Blog.aspx?ID=172&AuthorID=59058&t=The New Normal - What is it?
 I found this a wonderful question for as she points out the phrase is being used everywhere but just [...]

Marketing is a Many-Splendored Thing…

Set Godin’s blog post today - “Which comes first, the product or the marketing?” touches on a subject near and dear to my heart. In fact, it’s a “soapbox” issue for me, in that I find myself elaborating on a daily basis regarding the many different aspects and disciplines falling under the marketing umbrella.
Seth’s post [...]

The Living Organization & The Physics of Business - A Personal Perspective

In his recent post, Norman described The Living Organization model as the conceptual framework for understanding the physics of energy flows within organizations and between organizations and their environments. This model - which is in a state of ongoing evolution - is the result of years of Norman’s own experience as a business leader.
 
My own [...]

Why the profit motif may have too many “unintended consequences”

I was just reading a New Your Time article titled “When Academia Puts Profit Ahead of Wonder” (Click on the title to read the article).  It speaks eloquently about the problem of unintended consequences, the difficulty of being able to accurately predict all the results of our actions.  Hence many of our very well intended [...]

CEO succession and Leadership

In my recent entry I spoke of the challenge of selecting a leader and what we can learn from the current presidential candidates.  In a recent post by Idris Mootee “Visionary Leaders with Purposes Are Not Easy to Replace” he raises the example of Steve Jobs, the visionary leader of Apple Computer. 
I loved his [...]

Big Teams - Barriers to Innovation?

In his recent post “Is Design a Team Sports?”, Idris Mootee discusses the role of the individual designer versus a design team. During that discussion he broaches the question as to whether large teams are barriers to innovation. I think that there is a semantic trap in the question, becuase it potentially blurs the [...]

Is Stage-Gate a Barrier to Innovation?

 In a recent, thought-provoking posting on his excellent Innovation Playground blog, Idris Mootee posits that the traditional product development stage-gate framework is a barrier to innovation.
The following is my comment posted to his blog:
Idris:
When I first read the title of this post, the “old school product manager” in me reacted viscerally. Then when I read [...]

Leadership: The Philosopher’s Stone of Innovation…? (Part 2)

The other end of the spectrum re strategic decision-making is where it is totally driven by the leadership of the company. This is very often the case with start-up, early-stage and founder-run, privately held firms. The potential advantages are somewhat obvious: strategy is driven by a focused vision, factors which may not be effectively quantifiable [...]

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